The Faytans were certainly a stolid lot, as we afterward proved; but the flight of the airship was so startling that they craned their necks to watch it, and some rose in the canoes while others ducked down and covered their heads as if in terror. Fear was unknown to this people, but superstition bound them in chains, and this surely seemed like a demonstration of the gods. I must admit the boy handled the machine beautifully, and it responded to his touch like a thing of life. Several times he circled around, then swept out to sea until he was a mere birdlike speck, and finally came back and headed directly for the ship. Perhaps it had been five or six minutes since he left us, but to us it seemed an hour, so excited were we by his daring and his success. We kept the deck clear, pressing close to the rail, and it seemed Alfonso’s intention to land. He came toward us in a straight line; then the machine dipped, for as it neared us it was fully three hundred feet above the sea. Now the aëronaut shut down the motors and glided gracefully downward at an angle of nearly forty degrees. We were preparing to shout our applause, when like a great bird the biplane swept over the deck, struck the mainmast at about its middle and came crashing down in a heap—operator and aëroplane being mixed in a confused jumble. CHAPTER X THE PEARL CITY Joe and I rushed in first of all and pulled Alfonso out of the wreck. He was insensible and bleeding profusely from a cut across the forehead. Others eagerly took the boy from us and carried him below, his father sobbing that his son was dead, dead, dead! and now could never become the president of Colombia. I knew well enough Alfonso wasn’t dead, and told Lucia so when she asked me with a white, startled face. “A little damaged, that’s all,” said I, and watched her as she hurried away, womanlike, to render what assistance she could. “It were surely wonderful!” cried Uncle Naboth, viewing the mangled biplane that lay at the foot of the mast; “but he’s spoilt his flying machine the first trip.” “Oh, I’m not at all sure about that,” I replied. “What do you think, Joe?” “Why, it’s like Alfonso—a little damaged, that’s all,” he answered with a grin. “The motor seems all right, and that’s the main thing.” We made an examination, then, and found some of the framework of the planes splintered. Otherwise nothing was injured and a little work would soon restore the thing to good working order.